5 Benefits of Working with a Marketing Agency

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Every company has to decide at some point: should you do marketing in-house or partner with a marketing agency? While there are benefits to both, a marketing agency will most often give you the highest return on investment and take the most work off your plate. To help you make this decision, here are five benefits of working with a marketing agency that may change the way you think about external marketing. 

1. You Have Access to a Full Team of Professionals

Possibly the most significant benefit of working with a marketing agency is the opportunity to work with a full-service team of professionals. You have access to professional strategists, designers, photographers, writers, project managers, and a variety of others. With this multifaceted team, you have a team of experienced professionals working together, under one umbrella, to reach your business’ loftiest goals.

2. You Can Easily Identify (and Achieve) Your Business Goals

Marketing agencies have set processes that we use to identify your goals and needs. We thoroughly research your company, industry, competitors, and customers before we ever begin building a strategy. The team then uses that information to think creatively and strategically about how to reach the identified goals and how to find the ideal customer. You can engage with an agency knowing that they are doing the due diligence to take your business several steps further.

3. You No Longer Need to Train and Manage a Team

When working with an internal marketing team, there is a severe amount of overhead that goes into hiring, training, and developing the people on that team. Working with a marketing agency, on the other hand, eliminates the time and resources you would have spent managing internal employees. You, instead, have more capacity to focus on your core business.

4. You Have Insight from a Marketer’s Perspective

You’re working in your business day in and day out. So, it can often be challenging to see new avenues to venture into, especially in marketing. By bringing in an outside team’s perspective, you are introduced to different thought patterns and ideas that you may not have otherwise thought of. 

5. You Gain the Ability to Stay Ahead of New Technologies and Trends

Your marketing agency lives and breathes marketing. Because they’re spending time staying ahead of trends and technologies, you will, too, effortlessly. You will find that your agency will introduce you to tools that you didn’t know you needed—and those are often the ones that accelerate your marketing efforts. 

Are You Thinking of Engaging with a Marketing Agency?

Green Apple works hard to become a part of our clients’ teams. We take the time to identify their goals and needs before building a strategy to help them get there. It’s a tireless effort that we love to our cores, and we are always rooting for our clients’ overall success—inside and outside of marketing. Want us to join your team? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation.

5 Books to Read When Looking for Your “Why” in Marketing

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Discovering your why when marketing your business should always be step one. It’s the foundation upon which you can build your entire brand—because people don’t create a business without a reason. They create a business because they are passionate about providing something to their audience or solving a problem. 

This is especially important for your marketing strategy because when you fully understand what drives you and your company, you can explain it to others. Marketing is primarily storytelling, and you need a story to share with your audience. So, when you’re discovering your why, especially as you inform your marketing direction, where do you start? If you’re a bibliophile, we recommend these five books to find the true drive behind your company’s efforts.

1. Robots Make Bad Fundraisers: How Nonprofits Can Maintain the Heart in the Digital Age

For the nonprofit organizations that live on fundraising, your why is essential. People give their time and their money because they feel good about where those resources are going, and they want to make a difference. By discovering the heart of your organization and telling that story in the strongest way possible, you can insight passion in others and boost your fundraising goals. 

In Steven Shattuck’s book, Robots Make Bad Fundraisers: How Nonprofits Can Maintain the Heart in the Digital Age, he ventures to answer an important question: Has technology actually gotten in the way of building a personal connection with our supporters?

He would argue that, yes, the more digital our world becomes, the less our hearts are in it, and the further we stray from our purpose. We rely on these technologies to fuel our growth, but, in reality, they are allowing us to lose focus, and we aren’t telling the passionate story of purpose these organizations were founded on. This nonprofit-focused marketing book actually has an interesting lesson to teach us all, even in the for-profit sector—how to keep the donors you have, inspire new donors to give, and maintain your team members’ sanity.

2. Brand Storytelling: Put Customers at the Heart of Your Brand Story

A business’s purpose always circles back around to the most important person: the customer. We build these businesses because we want to help our audience overcome a challenge or feel a certain way. It’s only right, then, that we keep our customer at the heart of the brand story. Miri Rodriguez’s book, Brand Storytelling: Put Customers at the Heart of Your Brand Story, helps us do just that. 

Rodriguez guides the reader to use storytelling to trigger the emotions that humans are driven by. She explains how to analyze, pull apart, and rebuild your brand’s story in a way that focuses the business as the “sidekick,” putting the control in the customer’s hands, allowing them to be the key influencer.

3. This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See

“Great marketers don’t use consumers to solve their company’s problem; they use marketing to solve other people’s problems,” says Seth Goldin, Author of This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See. This book description could stop here, as that’s the perfect way to describe what it means to discover the reason behind why you do what you do. 

Goldin draws upon his many years in marketing to explain how marketers can make the world a better place through powerful marketing elements: empathy, generosity, and emotional labor. He walks the reader through identifying their viable audience, drawing on the signals to position their offering, building trust, telling a meaningful story, and giving people what they need to achieve their goals. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about. Right?

4. Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen

Does your message matter if your audience isn’t listening? In his book Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen, author Donald Miller shares his method for connecting with customers—helping them understand the benefits of using a brand’s products, ideas, or services. By simplifying your brand message, your audience will grasp it more quickly and be motivated to move forward. Miller helps readers do this through seven universal story points that all humans respond to. 

When building our messages, we must keep our messages clear and engaging. And where does that message begin? You guessed it: your why. Your understanding of your purpose allows you to build a clear message. Miller can help you get there.

5. Marketing: A Love Story: How to Matter to Your Customers

We search for our why because we want to matter to our customers. That moment when you think, “I have this great service. Why is no one taking advantage of it?” It’s because you know how great it is, and your audience doesn’t. In her book, Marketing: A Love Story: How to Matter to Your Customers, Bernadette Jiwa explains that we “have no shortage of ideas, but we struggle to tell the story of how they are going to be useful in the world.” We couldn’t agree more. By posing a series of thought-provoking questions, Jiwa helps the reader dive into what about their brand will resonate and how to craft a message that will matter. 

Are you looking to take your marketing to the next level? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation.

10 Marketing Questions to Answer Before Launching a Product or Service

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Dreaming up a new idea for your business can be an exciting and rewarding process. You are about to offer your audience something they need or want, and so you’re helping people while growing your company. But, we can get swept away into dreaming about our ideas sometimes, can’t we? In all the excitement, we can lose track of the reality of a launch. 

We want to help you think through how you can launch your new products or services in the most timely, cost-effective, and successful way. Here are ten marketing questions to answer before launching a product or service. 

1. Does it align with my company’s goals? 

When we add elements to our company’s repertoire, it’s crucial to ensure that they align with the vision we have for our brand. Because no matter how small, each product or service says something about your business—and could very well change the trajectory of your brand’s growth. So, it’s first and foremost important that you choose your additions wisely. Picture your business in two to five years. Does this product or service still fit into that picture? 

2. What problem does it solve for my audience? 

The primary reason to build a new product or service is to solve an issue for your audience. Does this idea address a common pain point for your customers? If the answer is yes, you may have just come across your next big seller! If not, you may need to return to the drawing board.

3. How can I build strategic messaging around it? 

Once you have your golden idea that aligns with your brand and solves a pain point for your customer, you’re ready to craft messaging. This is an involved process, but every second is worth it in the end. You can use your answer to question two, “What problem does it solve for my audience?” to inform this process. Once you have the answer to that question, you can begin building your messaging strategy. 

Identify the key messages that you’re sending to your audience and hone in on what your tone will sound like. In general, you’ll use this time to map out how you will communicate your offering to your customers so that they will not only understand it but will then want to take action. 

4. Which platforms should I use to announce the launch? 

Using your messaging strategy, you will send your messaging to customers on the most appropriate platforms. Take a moment to review your analytics for different channels to decide where it will be effective to spend your most effort. You should not ignore the platforms that aren’t performing quite as well, but this step will help you choose your priorities.

A few platforms to consider are:

  • Email marketing
  • Blog articles
  • Social media
  • The local and national media (i.e., press releases)
  • Paid advertising 

For tactics that haven’t performed well in the past, maybe this is your chance to redesign your strategy to build your audience before your launch. 

5. Have I updated my website and social media profiles? 

Launching a new element of your business is a wonderful opportunity to review your website and social media profiles. Whether it’s updating website headers and social media profile graphics or description content, you’ll want to ensure that these channels are updated to reflect the most current and accurate information about your brand. You can also take this chance to boost your website’s visibility by reviewing your SEO practices. If your site is a local brick and mortar, optimize it for “near me” searches. Otherwise, focus on overall SEO, which is a powerful tactic, no matter what type of business you have. 

6. Which customers of my audience will be most interested in this? 

By identifying which customers will be most interested in this new product, you can again position your priorities. Identify where this customer spends their most time, what they care about, and how you can speak to their pain points. Customer profiles are a useful tool when exploring your customers’ wants, needs, and habits. With this information under your belt, you can build targeted messaging for the customers who are dying to have your product or use your service. 

7. How will I continue the product or service’s success following the launch? 

Marketing is an ongoing effort. So, it’s essential that you plan for success not only as you prepare for launch but also for as long as your business is in operation. You can follow proactive marketing principles to monitor the success of your marketing campaigns continually. All the while, you must find new and creative ways to keep your current customers interested and entice prospective customers.  

8. Are my marketing and sales teams aligned on the launch details? 

At Green Apple, we often discuss sales and marketing alignment with our clients. Your launch’s success will largely depend on the streamlined communication in your business, so your sales and marketing teams must be telling the same story. When their message is aligned, your customers know what to expect and view your business as one trusted, unified front.

9. What services should I invest in for the highest return on investment? 

Your return on investment depends on the efforts that go into your launch and the effectiveness of those efforts. But, it’s important to realize that you can’t do it all. You can, of course, but professionals who specialize in those efforts may be able to do them better, faster, and cheaper than you can. For example, you may spend twice the resources to build something internally that an outsourced partner could do in half the time while delivering a much more professional and effective product. Take a second to consider what your team is not fully equipped to handle and identify the best partners to work with to fill those gaps. 

10. How do I market the new product or service to my employees? 

A massively important element of marketing that many companies overlook is internal marketing. It’s just as crucial that you market to your employees as you do to your customers. When your employees fully understand your business and are excited about what you’re selling, they will be more excited to share that with others to help your customers succeed. Your employees are your most valuable asset, so ensure that you spend a great deal of time supporting their knowledge about and overall satisfaction with your brand.  

Do you need help building a robust and effective marketing strategy for your brand’s product or service launch? We can help. Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation.

What You Should Know About Marketing to Millennials and Gen Z

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By 2025, millennials will make up 75% of the workforce. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?  This statistic shines a bright light on how our marketing lens should shift as generations age. Before we knew it, Millennials will be three-quarters of the workforce, and in the blink of an eye, Gen Z will be right behind them. So, how do we market to these audiences? What makes them tick? In this article, we share what you should know about appealing to these two age groups.  But first…

Is generational marketing worth it?

Though many brands are hoping to attract an audience of any age, some are surprised to find that they are only seeing individuals who fit the same profile. Of course, one may think, “Well, that’s the audience that is attracted to our business.” While, yes, there is some validity to that, you may be missing entire generations of people who would be interested in what you have to offer.  If you’ve noticed that you aren’t attracting the younger Millennial and Gen Z generations, consider these tips. 

5 Things You Should Know About Marketing to Millennial and Gen Z Audiences

1. Your brand story should be authentic.  
Your audience can spot “fluffy” marketing campaigns from a mile away, especially Millennials and Gen Z. They have grown up with a surplus of information on their computers or at their fingertips, giving them years of practice at filtering out what isn’t worth their time. Tell a story that speaks to their motivations and their needs. Provide them with a practical reason to engage with your business because, trust us, this audience wants to feel good about the companies they support. You can allow them to feel connected to your message by crafting an authentic story they can care about.
2. Email marketing is still effective, even for Gen Z. 
Most people assume that Gen Z’s attachment to social media makes it the best, or only, way to reach them. However, according to a recent study by Campaign Monitor, 58% of those surveyed check their email multiple times per day—so there is very little competition for space in their inboxes. Don’t be too quick to assume that traditional marketing tactics are lost on younger generations—those may just be the avenues we need to grab their attention. 
3. Use your limited time wisely.
Make your marketing count. A widely-used and often disputed marketing statistic is that Millennials have a 12-second attention span, whereas Gen Z has eight seconds. Many believe that the issue is less about the ability to pay attention and more about an overwhelming amount of options. Whichever you feel is true, the goal is the same: your time is limited, so use it wisely. Let’s imagine that you only have eight to 12 seconds to make these younger audiences notice you. How are you going to stand out from the countless competitors vying for their attention? 
4. Hone in your customer experience. 
As we discuss the importance of authenticity and helping your audience feel connected to your brand, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention customer experience. Millennials and Gen Z have higher expectations than generations before them—not in a way that feels demanding, but rather they want to feel taken care of by the brands they’re trusting with their hard-earned money. Younger generations are more selective and want to believe that you want to help them solve a problem or meet a need. Analyze your customer experience to ensure ease of use and that each customer feels special and supported throughout the process. After all, who wouldn’t want that in a buying experience? 
5. Focus on diversity, inclusivity, and equality. 
Millennials and Gen Z help us identify areas in our society that need to be more diverse, inclusive, and equal. Though these challenges have long been fought for by many generations, these two age groups are using their social platforms to raise awareness about these issues—and it’s changing our expectations for the companies we support.  Take brands like Aerie and Target, for example. They identified that their customer base wanted to see more representation. These brands answered society’s call—embracing the idea that humans are diverse, and we deserve to see that in the brands we support. Both retail chains have begun to show greater representation in their marketing, including more diversity in body shape, race, and gender. You’ll notice this change in other areas as well, such as mannequin sizes and clothing options.  Though these are specific examples, we can learn from Aerie and Target when considering how to speak to our Millennial and Gen Z audiences—through supporting causes they care about and making a genuine difference in the world. 

We Can Help You Reach New Demographics

If you take one lesson from this article, let it be this: these generations want to feel good about where they spend their money. So, let’s do everything we can to show them we’re worth the effort. Do you need help finding the missing pieces to your marketing demographic? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation.

Should I Hire an Internal Marketing Team or Outsource to a Local Agency?


Marketing is crucial to the success of a business. It helps you meet your sales goals, increase your brand awareness, and tell your story. Though many understand the importance of marketing’s role in growing a business, few are sure of how to go about it. Should you hire an internal team, or should you outsource to a local agency? For the most robust, effective marketing strategy, we recommend outsourcing. Let’s talk about why.

In this article, we’ll cover a few reasons to consider outsourcing, including:

  • Staying ahead of the curve
  • Getting more out of your marketing budget
  • Having a comprehensive marketing team without searching for employees
  • Focusing on your core business operations

With an outsourced marketing agency, you can…

Stay Ahead of the Curve

A marketing agency lives and breathes innovative tools and effective strategies. They are working daily to research new methods, test the effectiveness of a tactic, and identify the best way to connect with your audience. Not only do agencies stay ahead of the latest trends, but they also invest the time into learning about your internal operations and your target audience’s expectations and needs. 

Agencies live in the marketing mindset, whereas internal teams are living inside of your industry’s world. When you outsource your marketing, you know that you’re working with a team that will identify your vision, build a strategy, monitor that strategy continually, and do everything in its power to deliver results. 

Get More Out of Your Marketing Budget

Can you believe that hiring an external marketing team could actually make your budget stretch further? When you think of it in terms of overhead, you can skip hours of searching for an internal employee and the countless dollars you would spend hiring, training, and managing that new person. 

Having an agency on retainer also ensures that your marketing strategy will not be put on hold when someone leaves your team—allowing you to continue growing even during times of turnover. Finally, consider the continual training costs necessary for professional development, such as conferences and classes, and industry organizations’ membership costs.

All in all, agencies bypass your overhead costs and provide you access to a diversely talented and well-trained marketing team that always has a finger on the pulse. 

Have Access to a Comprehensive Marketing Team without Hiring 

An agency removes the need to hire someone to fill every role—content, digital marketing, graphic design, photography, web development, and so on. You will have access to each of these skills, all in one place. It’s as simple as that. In Green Apple’s case, we approach each new client strategy by handpicking a team of marketing professionals to fit your business’s specific needs. We serve as a full-service, one-stop-shop for all things marketing, and you’ll find that it takes the stress off your plate. Rather than piling marketing tasks onto your to-do list, you know that an agency is already five steps ahead of you. 

Focus On Your Core Business

Your business’s core operations are where you want to spend your time. If you’re a roofing company, for example, you don’t want to spend your days wading through marketing tasks, nor should you have to. When companies have the internal capacity to tackle their core focus, that’s when they reach their highest potential. An agency identifies that potential and makes sure that your marketing aligns appropriately. You, on the other hand, focus on what you know and what you love doing. We take care of the rest. 

Are you ready to take your business goals to the next level? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation. To have marketing insight sent straight to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter—The Core.

7 Reasons You Shouldn’t Cut Your Marketing Budget in a Recession

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“But, we have to cut something.” You may be feeling as though marketing is the easiest line item in your budget report to slash. We get it. As we’ve worked through this recession, Green Apple has made cuts of our own to ensure that we’re financially strong enough to serve our customers. We’re right there with you. However, cutting your marketing budget can hurt your business long-term, even when it might help it slightly in the immediate future. 

To ensure that your business can continue serving its customers, you must consider a few key points. Here are seven reasons to reconsider reducing your marketing budget in a recession.

1. What if your competitors don’t?

You may consider cutting your marketing budget, but if your competitors don’t, where does that leave you? When you reduce your marketing budget, you decrease how and how often your customers see you—allowing your competitor to move in.

2. Your marketing team can help your customers support you.

The return on investment for your marketing strategy is still valid during a recession. While things are “normal,” your strategy is to drive sales and build relationships; however, during a recession, you are more focused on the relationship-building side of things and can keep your customers invested in your success. They love you as much as you love them, and they don’t want to see your business struggle. Your marketing team can help you show the right amount of vulnerability and transparency, while still sending the message that you are here to help.

3. Your marketing team protects you.

Clients often think about marketing as advertising, but it’s so much more. Your marketing team is telling your brand’s story, and that story must be shaped to align with the social climate—so as to not be insensitive or offensive. Using COVID-19 as an example, companies needed to quickly shift their messaging strategies to be sensitive and empathetic. Having a team on your side that can help shift and shape your message allows you to support your audience, while keeping your brand top of mind.

4. You don’t want your customers to feel abandoned.

Your marketing strategy strengthens your relationship with your audience. A reduction in your budget can leave your customers wondering where you went—or worse, if your business is in jeopardy of shutting down.

You will, of course, be there for your audience in a different way during a recession. Your messaging will focus on how you’re taking care of customers as the tides change. Marketing can tell your audience what you’re doing to keep their best interests in mind, strengthening their trust in your brand.

5. It may be time to launch that new product.

You have less competition during a recession, as other companies are focusing on staying afloat. They aren’t putting their time and effort into launching new products or growing their business. If you are in the position to, and you have ideas ready to launch, work with your marketing team to put your new product out into the world.

6. You will not bounce back as easily.

If you reduce your marketing efforts, it leaves you in a difficult position when you’re ready to bounce back. You’ve spent a great deal of time and money growing your brand’s reach. Rather than scaling back, discuss a strategy with your marketing team to find ways to keep your reach consistent. Once the economy is on an upswing, you will appreciate not having lost months—or years—of progress.

7. It can take you off course to meet your goals.

Even amid a recession, you still want to move forward. Your marketing team can help you keep your goals in mind and find new strategies to meet them. Don’t underestimate a marketing team’s versatility and the potential to keep your business growing, even when the economy is less than ideal. 

Talk Strategy Before You Make Cuts

Before you decide on your budget, discuss all the options with your marketing team. They can likely work with you to achieve your goals, even with necessary budget accommodations. Your relationship with your marketing team should be transparent—they want to see you succeed, too, and will do everything they can to make that happen. 

Ready for a marketing team with your best interests at heart? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation.

4 Marketing Insights to Know Before Calling a Prospect

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In today’s world, the buyer has more control over the sales process than ever before. On the one hand, this can make things more difficult for sales professionals. They don’t have as much control over the narrative and buyer’s journey as they once did. However, this new world order provides opportunities for business development pros. Rather than having to conduct tons of research on a prospect or cold-calling potential leads, they can instead use marketing insights—one of the many reasons salespeople are smarter than ever before.   

Marketing Insights Every Salesperson Should Know Before Calling a Prospect

Here are four specific marketing insights to share with your business development team to help them be more effective in their outreach to prospective customers: 
1. Their Overall History of Engagement with Your Brand
Today’s marketing tools allow you to track a prospect’s engagement over the past several years. These insights can help salespeople quickly answer questions like: What content have they read or converted on? Have they ever spoken with a sales representative before?  Even if it’s their first time speaking with a prospect, your sales leader can know the prospect’s entire relationship with your brand. This information is incredibly valuable for weaving the context of their history of engagement into the conversation. 
2. Insights Behind the Action That Qualified Them as a Lead
Knowing what action a prospect took to qualify them as a lead is non-negotiable. However, I’ve found that it’s also important to provide sales with an overview of what that resource or lead magnet is about. In many cases, sales professionals don’t take time to read all of the lead generation resources that marketing creates. Providing a brief synopsis that helps your sales team know what the resource is about makes it easier for them to create the connection between the action of the prospect and your products and services. 
3. Their Ability to Make a Purchasing Decision
Most companies know the job title or roles that would have the ability to say “yes” to a final purchasing decision. Capturing this information through your marketing efforts will ensure salespeople aren’t wasting time on leads that they can’t convert.  
4. The Career History of a Prospect
It’s useful to understand your prospect’s job history. In many cases, your CRM can track whether a person has moved from one company to another. You can also leverage LinkedIn insights to capture a prospect’s career trajectory and mutual connections. All these factors will influence how much a prospect can impact a purchase decision, how much educating you’ll have to do, and how quickly they can make a decision. Today’s business development professionals have access to more information about their prospects than ever before. The more your marketing team can help salespeople contextualize their messaging and save time getting to know the prospect, the more effective both teams will be in the long run.  Green Apple Strategy’s team is dedicated to understanding our clients’ target audience, creating compelling content, and generating the leads you need to grow your business. Contact us today to schedule a consultation.

4 Factors for Creating a Customer-Centric Culture

“Customer experience” has become one of the hottest marketing buzzwords of 2020. And for good reason…

  • 84% of companies who prioritize customer experience are reporting an increase in revenue. (Source)
  • 73% of consumers say a good experience is key in influencing their brand loyalties.
  • Customers switching companies due to poor service costs U.S. companies a total of $1.6 trillion. (Source)

The bottom line is that customer experience impacts your bottom line.

4 Factors Every Business Needs to Create a Customer-Centric Culture

So, how do you go about creating a culture within your business or organization that values the customer experience? While the specific tactics or strategies may evolve, here are four key factors that you need to create a customer-centric culture:

1. Leadership Buy-In Across the Organization

You can’t simply silo customer experience to your customer support or client success department. Why? Because every department in your organization has a role in creating the experience customers have with your brand.

If you want to create a customer-centric culture, you must get buy-in from the leaders and stakeholders across every department. Your CFO should recognize the impact that his or her team has on customer experience. Your marketing leader should push his or her team to think creatively about the ways they can impact customer experience.

Leaders across your organization should embrace the importance of customer experience and constantly be thinking about how their departments can lead customers into a deeper, more meaningful relationship with your brand.

2. Compelling Brand Values that Are Lived Out

Saying you value customer experience as a core value is one thing. Creating systems and structures within your organization that support customer experience is another. One of my favorite examples of this is the way Zappos tries to stay away from strict policies and ask their reps to do whatever they feel is the right thing to do for the customer and the company.

If you say you value customer experience, make sure you’re doing everything you can to keep that promise.

3. Engaged Employees Who Care About Their Work

It might sound counter-intuitive, but if you want to improve customer experience, you might want to start investing more in your employees. Engaged employees are more likely to work hard, care about your brand’s reputation, and make recommendations for improving the overall customer experience.

4. An Understanding of What Customers Want

If you want to improve your customer experience, taking time to gather insights about what customers care about and desire from your brand should be a priority. Take time to listen to customers. Be intentional about the customer journey and onboarding experience you’re creating. Find ways to create emotional connections with customers. Have a clear set of customers in mind when you’re making important business decisions.

Every company likes to think (and say) that they’re customer-centric. Considering how to embrace these four factors will help you create a customer-centric culture and ensure you deliver on your brand promises.

4 Creative Ways to Be More Agile & Effective with Marketing in 2020

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If there’s only one word I’m encouraging business leaders and marketers to value in 2020, it’s agility. The business world is changing faster than ever before. As marketers and sales professionals, we must stay vigilant to what today’s customers want and how they communicate. This is why being agile is the most important part of any marketing plan you could put together for 2020. It’s essential to be able to pivot without abandoning your entire strategy.  

4 Creative Ways to Be More Agile & Effective with Marketing in 2020

So how can you be more agile in your marketing efforts this year? Here are a few creative practices you can consider: 

  1. Shorten the planning process for your campaigns. If you typically plan the whole year, instead, consider planning the first six months. If you plan by quarters, try six-week campaigns. Shortening the length of your planning process will cause you to systematize the way you evaluate campaigns with a more agile approach.
  2. Make sure you’re continually looking at the data to analyze campaigns. Companies that adopt data-driven marketing are six times more likely to be profitable year-over-year. By letting data be the diplomat, you will be able to see what’s working and what’s not.
  3. Set weekly stand-up meetings with key leaders. Communication is the key to agile marketing. One recommendation I often give is to conduct 15-minute check-ins with the team to briefly discuss work from the previous day, in addition to plans for that day. This strategy allows you to address any hiccups and resolve them as quickly as possible.
  4. Celebrate collaboration and teamwork. A team that enjoys working together will be more willing to embrace an agile approach. In closed teams, it’s easy for people to start pointing fingers at the other. But creating a culture of collaboration and teamwork will cultivate an environment where everyone is willing to work together despite their differences or setbacks to accomplish a goal. 

Taking a more agile approach to your marketing campaigns isn’t easy, especially if your team isn’t familiar with the approach. While you may not be able to direct the daily activities of your sales and marketing departments, taking time to consider these ideas will help you set the tone for greater collaboration within your team.

How Marketing Can Directly Impact Revenue with Sales Enablement

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Directly tying your marketing efforts to revenue generation is a challenge for almost every business leader and marketing manager. In today’s world, there are so many factors that influence a potential customer’s decision, so utilizing proper marketing tactics is essential. It’s the only way to know if the time, energy, and resources you invest are making an impact on the bottom line. 

One of the simplest and most effective ways for marketing to directly impact revenue is to focus on sales enablement. Essentially, sales enablement is equipping your business development team with assets that make them more efficient and effective. This includes content that helps prospects to answer the questions they ask, solve their problems, and build the case internally with their team.

But, what’s the best thing about sales enablement? All of it can be tracked, measured, and attributed to the bottom line. 

How to Create Sales-Enablement Tools That Directly Impact Revenue

How can marketing equip your sales team with resources that make them smarter and more efficient and effective? Here are a few important considerations when creating your sales-enablement assets: 

  1. Sales Enablement That Answers Potential Customers’ Biggest Questions. The most effective sales-enablement tools proactively answer the questions of prospective customers. This includes assets such as answers to frequently asked questions, at-a-glance competitor comparisons, and statistics that add credibility.
  2. Sales Enablement That Comes in Different Formats. Every customer is different in how they prefer to consume content. The good news is that you don’t have to create all of these resources from scratch. Re-organizing the content you create into various formats is one of the simplest ways to maximize your content marketing efforts. Equipping your sales team with content in various formats such as ebooks, case studies, blog posts, videos, webinars, and infographics is key.
  3. Sales Enablement That Is Easy to Find and Simple to Use. Sales enablement tools are effective if your business development team actually uses them. That’s why it’s critically important to create sales enablement tools that your team can use. Make sure everything you create is easily accessible, consumable, and shareable.
  4. Sales Enablement That Makes Your Business Development Team More Efficient. Marketing automation and technology have opened the door for new levels of sales enablement. Not only can you create resources for sales to use, but you can also send it on their behalf. Finding simple ways to leverage marketing automation to support your sales team will save them a tremendous amount of time and enable them to focus on having meaningful conversations with potential customers. 

The great thing about sales enablement is that all of it can be tracked. You can see what potential customers are consuming. You can know what content is influencing their decisions. You can share that information with your sales team to help them be even more effective. While marketing might not be able to take complete credit for “closing the deal,” empowering your business development team with sales-enablement tools that can be tracked and measured is a meaningful way to directly tie your marketing efforts to the bottom line.